


A Family Burned Whole by the Light

by Denzer



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Badass Rey, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Dark Rey (Star Wars), Dark Side Rey, F/M, Fix-It, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Jedi Ben Solo, Jedi Leia Organa, Leia Organa Deserves Better, Mild Smut, No pregnacy, POV Ben Solo, POV Finn (Star Wars), POV Maz (Star Wars), POV Rey (Star Wars), Porn With Plot, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Post-TRoS, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey Needs A Hug, Rey Skywalker, Rey Solo, Soft Ben Solo, Some EU Star Wars References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:07:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23480665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Denzer/pseuds/Denzer
Summary: Set five months after the end of TRoS, Rey helps the Resistance to root out the remnants of the First Order's influence across the galaxy. Grieving and angry, she is secretly searching for a way to bring Ben back.The hunt for some hope of finding him is pushing Rey away from her friends and moving her closer to the Dark Side but there is a strange presence in the Force around her that both Finn and Maz can see. Could this familiar Force-Energy be the thing that will save her from the Dark?A story told in five chapters, from different perspectives: Finn, Maz, Rey, Ben and the requisite (and deserved) happy, smut-filled ending._____ Thanks so much to Reylo Hidden Gems for recommending this and for this amazing moodboard by the wonderfulSvalewayland. I am still dying just looking at it! -------
Relationships: Kylo Ren & Rey, Kylo Ren/Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 89
Kudos: 126
Collections: Reylo Hidden Gems





	1. Finn

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Empyrean](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22267066) by [WhiteRoseRed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteRoseRed/pseuds/WhiteRoseRed). 
  * Inspired by [Empyrean](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22267066) by [WhiteRoseRed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteRoseRed/pseuds/WhiteRoseRed). 



> I'm taking a break from my post-TLJ Fic for a few days to write this.  
> It's inspired by a gorgeous poem by White Rose Red which you should definitely go and read.  
> There are five chapters all from different perspectives, Finn, Maz, Rey, Ben and an Epilogue where most of the fluff and smut will happen. There are a few elements of the EU in this because I've been reading diasterisms compulsively and her amazing work has seeped into my bloodstream.
> 
> I'm aiming to update every 3 days or so.
> 
> I hope you like it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

A shadow is how Finn sees it. It's how his mind processes this strange presence in the Force - as a dark outline that follows Rey throughout the galaxy, even here on this murky, Darkside moon.

Her hands lift high, to rip the doors from one of the last strongholds of the First Order remnants. There is a conclave of the remaining commanders in the bowels of the building. Intel that had cost several lives to obtain.

In the clearing, they are visible, unprotected, but it is the only feasible approach to this battered fortress surrounded by an endless moat of deadly forest and roving monsters Finn can feel prowling between the trees.

This glade, the most direct route, had been selected both for drop-off and extraction point, though Poe had fought for bombing the building from the air. The possibility of hostages, of innocent captives, had swayed the new Council.

The shade moves along the length of her arms, then curls itself sharply around her back.

When Rey takes a half-step forward, the dagger passes straight through the cloud of blackness behind her, tendrils of it trailing out in its wake before coalescing again.

Her head turns, as if following the knife's trajectory but her eyes are downcast. Then she whips her saber across her body in an easy, circuitous display that Finn recognises from another forest, another battle they had faced together.

Rey turns to confront the unseen enemy hiding in the gloom of this sunless world.

“Nightsister,” she says, low enough for Finn to hear.

He moves forward to her left side, blaster raised and roving until it settles where it feels true. This is the Force too, Finn has learned, it sings in his aim.

His eyes slide to her profile as she focuses on their target. Beyond her, the shadow guards her right side, leans forward with her, mirroring the motion of her body.

Months now, clearing the remains of the First Order's influence throughout the Mid Rim, converting members where they can, destroying what is irretrievable.

Still, he cannot bring himself to tell her he sees it too.

He had tried, once, when he'd found her on Tatooine, half-conscious in a cavelike dwelling where her grief had etched itself into the Force for hundreds of klicks like a homing signal. A distress call that no-one could answer.

The shadow had covered her, convulsing.

She had stared at him as he struggled to explain.

“Rey, there is something I can feel. No, it's more than that. I _see_ it. It's the force and I think maybe you see it too-”

She had cut him off with a strangled cry and pushed herself away from him.

“I can't see anything!”

She stood in the middle of the room, body tense and fists clenched at her side. She had sounded horrified, appalled by what he was telling her and then her voice dropped to a whisper. Her form leeched of tension and even the shade that was pressed against her heart had pulled back from her then, as Finn had.

“The Force is cruel... heartless... I don't want you to feel it.”

Her sharp command brings him back to the clearing.

“Focus, Finn.”

A battle with a Nightsister is not the place to let his mind wander.

“Show yourself, Witch!” Rey shouts into the forest, backed by a swell of force energy.

There is a peel of laughter in return and a figure slinks from behind the nearest tree into a patch of dull starlight. A swathe of long, frayed hair covers a near-naked body that moves in place, shimmering with dark energy.

“Jedi no longer,” she calls with a feline tilt of her head, “You have so little left to lose.” Finn feels the dark pull of her voice in his bones, calling him forward.

“So lonely...” the voice takes on a new cadence and Rey stiffens.

The shadow wraps itself around her, touching everywhere but her face until she breathes again.

Finn's weight shifts. He is about to step toward the Darkside witch when Rey's arm shoots out, planting her palm flat on his chest, grounding him with a burst of something he can't quite see but that rings in his ears.

“Siren call,” she tells him, “Resist it.”

That's all it takes, the barest reminder of the Jedi texts she had shown him, and Finn is firing at the Nightsister. The blaster bolts pass through her body and then she fades with another peel of laughter. A projection. Clever witch.

He turns to find empty space where Rey had been standing. With a jolt, he spins in place, searching the clearing for any sign of her. There is nothing but darkness. No sounds, no smells, not the slightest inkling of life.

“Rey!” his whisper is loud in the night. There is no response.

He backs up to the middle of the clearing, thinking of the rancors that nest along the eastern side of the fortress and roam freely through these woods.

“Rey!” he calls louder now, heart thumping.

There is a flash of yellow light, the _whump_ of Rey's saber flaring to life, in the trees to his right. He races toward it, jumping low bushes and clinging vines, ignoring the whirling shadows created by the moving glare of her sword in the darkness.

He charges toward the light, reaching it as it stills.

He stops in his tracks when he sees her.

The Nightsister is against a tree, the burnt slash of skin across her chest leaking power Finn can feel from where he stands. Rey has her saber to the Darksider's throat.

“Tell me what you know,” Rey is saying, a low grinding whisper that Finn does not recognise coming from her gritted teeth, “Tell me how to restore what was taken from me.”

She had fought Poe so hard, Finn remembers. She had listed the reasons she should lead this mission, that it should be stealth, that she would need no more than one person with her.

A distraction, Finn thinks, she needed bait.

He fires before his mind has caught up with his train of thought. He fires as a defense mechanism so he cannot follow the trail of it to the dark place it is going. And, as he'd been trained all his life, he shoots to kill.

“No!” Rey's scream rings out in the darkness.

There is chattering and screeching that echoes her in the treetops, a sudden sweep of small alarmed lifeforms awoken by her cry. Rey turns and points her saber at Finn, bends her knees to an offensive crouch.

The shadow, darker than the blackness of the forest, wraps around her saber arm, dragging toward the earth. It soothes in ripples over her shoulders, sweeps tender across her cheek. It is unnerving, watching such a display and seeing no reaction from the girl who has taught him so much of the Force.

“She could have helped me,” Rey says, the tip of her tawny blade quivering, “She knew how to bring him b-”

She cuts off the end of her own sentence with another scream.

Finn wants to cover his ears, wants to turn and run from the rage, the despair. It pulses from her and binds him to the spot, forcing him to witness the effect of his actions.

In the distance, there is a reply to Rey's ferocious wail.

The roar of a rancor, charging, reaches both of them at the same time. The ground shakes with the tremor of monstrous stampeding feet and neither of them has any choice but to run.

“Poe!” Finn calls to the comm on his shoulder, his words tumbling over his racing breath, “Emergency evac. Repeat-”

“Ten seconds away, buddy. Get to the clearing.” Poe cuts him off and he is grateful to spare his lungs the effort of talking while his legs are pumping over the churning ground.

He feels Rey to his left, a swirl of force energy so manic it is distracting. She is clearing the path before them, pushing back vines and bending tree trunks to the ground so they can escape.

The roar of the rancor is close, shuddering breaths that chill Finn's spine and spur his legs faster. As the clearing comes into view, he feels Rey beginning to slow. Her pace is faltering.

There is something wrong, something so wrong that the air around him feels static and thick.

She has a hand pressed to her chest, running while heaving dry, desperate sobs.

Panic. Anguish. The loss of hope. Finn can sense it engulfing her and it is the first time since Tatooine that she has let her guard drop. She picked a helluva time for it.

He veers toward her, slowing his stride to grip her arm and drag her with him. The shadow pulls back from the spot Finn is holding, gathers at her heart where her hand is clutching, fingers curling over and over as she hauls air into her lungs. But the shadow did not move fast enough, not before Finn has felt the weight of it, the signature of its presence in the Force.

A flash of Rey's memory comes unbidden with Finn's touch: a voice he recognises, sounding softer than he had ever imagined it in his nightmares.

“I won't... I swear it... I'll find a way back to you...”

He had known it though, hadn't he? Who else could it have been? Finn had never seen Rey's thoughts, the way she had seen his, she had kept a tight barrier around herself since Tatooine, but he had known her feelings all the same.

Ahead, Poe has brought the shuttle to a low hover, the open bay doors pointed toward them. Finn pitches himself into the cargo hold, pulling Rey with him as the shuttle takes off at speed. Beyond the closing ramp, two rancors blast into the clearing, dragging torn branches and clumped thicket with them. They turn on each other when they find the glade empty.

“Status?” Poe calls over his shoulder.

“We're fine, we're both... fine,” he shouts back.

Beside him, Rey is curled on her side, legs pulled in tight, arms circled over her head. Her body is lurching back and forth with silent cries that twist in his gut. The Force is clawing at him in powerful waves that threaten to lift him from the floor but still, he knows what he did was right.

Nothing a Nightsister gives you comes without a price.

The shadow is there, running in soft, slows waves over her back. In the bright light of the shuttle, it looks thin, gray in colour.

Finn wonders how much of it she can feel. By the swell of sorrow that's seeping from Rey, he doesn't think she feels anything of it at all.

He remembers her words on Tatooine, when she'd whispered, trancelike, at him through a sand-coated mouth.

“All I've done. All I've done for the Light and I only asked one thing in return. What more could I have given? What would have been enough?”

Her eyes had focused on him then but what he had seen there had made him want to look away.

“I should have taken his hand.”


	2. Maz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, I had planned to update every 3 days but then the whole heavy feel of this story started to get to me so I went back to my fluffy post-TLJ for a bit.  
> Sorry for the delay!
> 
> Fair Warning - Some of my feelings on TRoS may be not-so-subtly displayed in this chapter.

“Rey Solo!”

Three dishevelled Resistance fighters freeze in the doorway as Maz's cantina quietens around them. The band stops its warbling tune to stare. Even the Ewok couple, ferociously humping in the corner, slow their pace to eyeball the newcomers.

The girl takes a step backward, involuntary, her spine hitting the liberated stormtrooper's chest. She flinches when his fingers wrap her upper arms, steadying her. The child looks like she wants to cry but instead, she shakes her friend off and schools her trembling features into a cold stare.

“Maz, stop calling me that.”

Maz remembers the night of their victory celebration on Ajan Kloss. That name had slipped from her lips before she'd caught herself and Rey's legs had given way, dropping her supplicant before Maz's smaller form.

The Force could be a trickster, she had thought. It could trip you up and make you reveal truths when you were not looking for them... or when you had helped yourself to far too many Correllian whiskeys.

“I call it as I see it,” Maz says easily now, as she clambers over the bar and uses a stool to scramble down the other side. The next time she re-builds this place, she will make the counters lower, she thinks as she approaches the combat-spattered threesome.

Wherever they have come from, it was not pretty. Poe's flight suit is wrinkled and torn, Finn has a gash on his forehead that's left a sweep of blood over the left side of his face and Rey is entirely covered in a dried black substance that reeks of sulfur.

She pokes Rey's belly and sniffs her finger.

“Sithspawn?” she asks and Rey nods tersely.

“We found the last Knight on Moraband. She had interesting defence methods,” her voice is flat, exhausted, “We could use a transcapacitor if you have one spare. Poe blew the hyperdrive on the way out.”

“Maybe if you hadn't insisted on killing everything in sight, I would have had more time get us out of there,” he snaps at her.

The bar springs to life again, picking up where it had left off, a mass of competing languages and aggressive, drunken cavorting. Maz adjusts her lenses, peering at Rey.

Now, this is new...

Ben's force energy is beside her, so strong she can see his outline. His ghostly face is turned toward Rey, of course. That young man had been smitten before he'd even known her name.

Interesting, she thinks, that she cannot feel a thing from him but she can still see the movement of his chest as he breathes.

The girl is a whole other story. Her energy is split, cracked into shards and every one of those fragments is screaming. Her pain tingles at the edges of Maz's goggles.

Too young to feel such loss, she thinks.

“Oh child, that boy really did a number on you, huh? It was always all or nothing with him, even when he was a kid, especially then.”

The outline of Ben's face shifts toward Maz, morphs into what seems like a sad smile.

Rey is trembling, her shoulders caved in as if to ward off any comforting touch.

But, for someone so broken, she recovers quickly. She storms off to a free booth, calling a stern, “I need a drink” over her shoulder.

Maz follows them, slips in beside the tacit outline of Ben and reaches over his lap to tap Rey's thigh, conciliatory. She doesn't acknowledge it, staring at the datapad menu and selecting the largest drink that Maz's cantina has to offer.

“Rey,” Finn has drawn out her name like a warning but before she can respond, Poe reaches across the table, takes the menu and orders a double. Finn glares.

“What?” Poe asks as he stretches an arm along the back of the booth behind Finn, giving Rey a hard, accusing stare, “She needs a night off.”

Rey is glaring now too and the table descends into silence.

Normally, Maz would take that as her cue to leave but there is a thrum of dark anger circling the table, the threat of unsaid things about to break free and wreak havoc in their wake.

“Where's the Wookie?” she asks, trying to diffuse the tension.

There is total silence, then -

“We could have turned her.”

Finn has said it quietly but Rey's body goes rigid, simmering with outrage and disgust. She does not respond.

Finn takes that as a cue to continue, his soft voice laced with caution, like he's talking down a maimed animal.

“Rey, not all of them deserve to die. Some of them can be saved.”

Rey launches to herself to her feet, bracing her hands flat on the table as if she is afraid she will use them to do something she cannot take back. Her knuckles press white.

Poe stands slowly, his face dark.

The soldier keeps his seat.

Beside her, Ben Solo's form has lifted, his forehead pressed to Rey's temple and the outline of his hand covering hers. Maz cannot help but notice Finn's eyes flick to where they connect before he speaks again.

“I was saved, Jannah and her whole tribe walk in the Light now. It's possible.”

He takes a deep breath and his hand slides toward her along the rough tabletop.

Rey's force energy rachets up in response. Still, she does not speak and Maz thinks of how a kyber crystal sounds when it cracks, that moment of pure silence before the propulsion of force current levels everything in its path.

The liberated stormtrooper, fool that he is for the girl before him, tries to reach her one last time.

“Rey, I know you felt her doubt... and I _saw_ the way the Sithspawn reacted when you killed her. They turned to you, like you were their Mas-”

“She was there!”

Rey's hands grip the table edge in an effort to calm herself. It shakes with the vibration of her energy.

“On Exegol. She was there. She only escaped because he threw her down a shaft. What right has she to live when he-”

Her voice is too loud, too choked and Maz knows what this is. Oh, how she remembers. Another girl the universe had asked too much of, with twisted buns that flanked her temples had sat in this bar and fought hard to plan the return of her own bright future, locked in a carbonite prison. That had also seemed impossible, at the time, and yet Leia would have razed the galaxy to the ground to find Han.

As if to confirm her suspicion, Rey moves like there's a fire beneath her, thudding a sooty boot into the center of the table and leaping over it to land hard. She walks away without a backward glance.

Like a wraith, Ben's shadow follows her.

Finn leans forward, peers at Maz.

“Do you... do you see it too?”

“I've been around for a thousand years, Commander,” she tells him, “I see everything.”

Poe sits down hard and rubs a palm over his jaw.

“This is getting out of control,” he says to the table before him.

Finn turns in his seat, his eyes narrowed as if they have had this conversation many times.

“She just needs time.”

Their eyes meet and Maz feels that same pull of unsaid things ripping free from hidden places.

“Yeah? How much time did it take for Ben Solo to turn into Kylo Ren?”

Climbing up onto the seat, Maz snaps to the waiting droid that had kept back from the raised voices, following its survival protocol. She swipes Rey's forgotten order straight from the tray and takes a long gulp.

“Rey wouldn't have liked this anyway,” she tells the two men before her, “Tatooine Sunrises are awful, just...” she shakes her head, “awful.”

Maz follows Rey along the corridor. This is one of the few basement hallways that had not been levelled by the very man whose ghostly image is now trailing behind a broken Jedi.

The Force is hollow around Rey, echoing nothing but her lone footsteps.

Maz can feel the beat of that stuttering heart in her fingertips, the longing, the anger.

The Dark Side, rising.

“Rey,” she calls, as softly as she can so as not to startle her, but the girl freezes in place all the same.

This is how it is for her now, fighting or fleeing. There is no soft space for rest, for comfort. She cannot see what is before her. She cannot see the ghostlike form that places calming hands on her shoulders.

Rey holds up a hand but does not turn.

“I'm fine.”

Her voice is cracked glass, scratching at the smoke-stained walls.

This is where she first saw him, Maz thinks. This is where the Force had first brought them together and frightened those untrained eyes with its cry of _Look! Look! See each other!_

“Oh child, you are far from fine but I can help you.”

She is meant to help. There is the pull of it already, the Force moulding itself to Maz's body, drawing her to the room at the end of the corridor where she stored what she could salvage after the First Order attack.

Rey is listening, Maz can tell by the turn of her head.

“Rey, yours is not the first broken heart to search in the Dark for what was lost in the Light.”

There is the Force again, sneaking up on her.

Maz tilts her head to regain control.

“The Light betrayed us,” the whispered words slither from Rey's curled lips.

These are dark thoughts, too dark for a girl who gave everything she had so the Light could burn bright across the galaxy again.

Ben Solo is shaking his head, the phantom of one arm circles Rey's waist, the other rests on the thin column of her neck.

“Come with me,” Maz orders them both and they follow her to the room where she stores her treasures.

Whatever is quartered here is humming, hooking a flow of energy around them and pulling them to it.

She knows Rey can feel it too because the moment Maz opens the door, the girl nearly knocks her over trying to locate it.

“What is it? What is it?” she is whispering to herself and there is the calming outline of Ben Solo's hand on her back, his free arm outstretched to show her where to go. She follows the line of his fingers as if she has seen him but there is no recognition in her face, poor child.

Maz does not remember where the box originated, or how she came to possess it, but she knows not to open it. She knows not to touch what is inside with bare skin.

She hurries over and clamps her hands around Rey's before she can break the seal on the black casket. Her fingers pass straight through the visage of Ben Solo's own grip.

Well, she can certainly feel _that_.

The fierce protectiveness, the frustration, the yearning, the pure, unbridled determination of a man watching someone he loves in pain.

Oh Force, what have you done to these two?

“What do I do with it?” Rey is staring, her eyes wide, “Maz, can this bring him back to me?”

At her back, Ben Solo leans down to kiss her cheek. His mouth is moving against Rey's ear but Maz cannot hear what he says. She gives him a sardonic look.

“I think you will find that Ben Solo is closer than you would think.”

A flare of Rey's anger stings Maz's eyes. She reaches to adjust her lenses as the girls speaks.

“Maz please, I can't... tell me what I do with this. Please show me how because I don't know how much longer...”

She trails off and looks at the floor with a forlorn, final, “Please.”

There are arms wrapped around her that she cannot feel and even Maz, who has seen more than her fair share of unfair things, cannot look away.

She doesn't remember the last time she did this, but Maz finds herself leaning back into the Force, opening herself to it so it can show these poor children how to gather up some rightness in all the wrong that has shrouded their lives.

But the Force is a trickster and it can be cruel.

Maz sees nothing but an image, the barest flicker of firelight, and that is all she can give this luckless, fractured girl.

Rey's eyes open wider.

She reaches out a hand and takes Maz's in hers, leans in to touch their foreheads together. “Thank you,” she whispers, with such earnestness that Maz thinks of that other girl again, that beautiful woman who held onto her strength in the face of such hardship.

Let her see this, she thinks.

Let Leia watch this devotion that rivals her own. Let it be that all my friend's sacrifices were not in vain. At the end of all this, let there be something good for a family that was burned whole by the Light.

And then Rey is running from the room, her feet beating a dull staccato against the stone floor.

Beside Maz, Ben Solo watches Rey like she is the one thing that had ever been worth looking at in a galaxy full of stars. He is waiting, and the longer Maz stares at him, the more solid he seems.

“You know what's in the box?” she asks and he turns his head to give a short nod.

“Better get going then,” she tells him, “she's going to need you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and the lovely comments this has gotten.  
> This lock-down period is stressful and seeing those notes just made my day. So, so appreciated.


	3. Rey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bring on the pain... I mean, it's Rey and Ben, it has to be really awful before it gets to be good, right?  
> And I promise, there is a happy (smutty) ending in sight. 
> 
> Please see notes at the end for some of the EU references

Poe is being difficult.

“You want me to give you my ship, our only mode of transport, so you can take a Dark Side mystery box to the Unknown Regions in order to bring Kylo Ren back from the dead?"

Rey turns her face away, takes a slug of her disgusting drink.

“You're right,” she tells him, because what else can she say?

“I don't know what I was thinking.”

Some part of her harks back to her Jaaku days as she sneaks away from the table.

_Me juuz ku, wermo._

It's what she has always been, a resentful little scavenger, just like he'd called her that first time. She had stolen to survive then, and that is what she is doing now, as she pulls the hood of her cape lower and boards Poe's shuttle.

It is not a pretty ship. It's not what she should bring to him. But the _Falcon_ is with Chewie on Kashyyyk and there is no time to retrieve it.

Rey feels it in the Force, the prickling of that oh-so-certain future she had seen. It's close and she _wants_.

She bounces the balls of her feet against the metal floor as she reaches over to strap the black casket into the co-pilot seat. She has a journey ahead of her and she is ready.

There is the thrum of the engine as she flicks the ignition, the flattening pressure of lift-off and the shuttle is rising, leaving the forests behind, pushing into the black.

She brushes the dead bond in that precious corner of her mind that still burns with the memories he had sent her.

_ Know me _ . 

He'd given her everything. Every trick he'd fallen for, every doubt, every brutal mistake, every twisted thought, every single feeling he had for her.

He'd shielded nothing.

“Ben.”

Rey's fingers move over the console.

It's a reflex now, talking to him, aiming the direction of her every thought to that part of her mind that burns like a severed limb.

_The last time I left this planet, I was with you._

It seems synchronous.

The jolt to hyperspace hits her as it has always done, with the awesome reverence of star lines.

The next time she does this, the very next time she plots a course into the navigation system of this old, battered U-wing, he will be with her.

She can _feel_ it.

When she falls asleep in the pilot seat, it is her first restful sleep since Exegol.

And she dreams, as she has done since he died, but this time, it does not leave her shaking and afraid. She sees him smile, how his face changes so completely that he is almost unrecognizable. She had felt the shape of that smile with the pad of her thumb.

She will feel it again.

The beeping of the nav system wakes her. She is only purpose now, as she jerks forward and slips the ship out of hyperspace and suddenly, after so long, Rey is hurtling through the thick atmosphere of a waterlogged planet toward the jagged ridge of that place she had fallen.

She is plunging toward him, as she always had, headlong and unflinching.

Luke had destroyed her hut, the one that Rey is certain Maz had seen in her vision, but she already knows that is not where she will find Ben.

She had seen him somewhere else, long ago. The shadow of his large body had appeared to her behind a thick barrier of opaque glass.

She unhooks the black case from its harness. The darkness of it palpitates in her hands, the herby smell of Dantooine Magic calls to her.

And she goes where she has always gone, straight to the Dark.

She doesn't even try to resist it.

But the Darkness is ready for her.

The incline is steeper than it was when she first came here. The terrain more treacherous, with cave after hidden cave of Xandu's and Nightshrikes that tear at her skin with their clawed wings and their whispers of failure.

Three times she loses her balance, tipping backward, wheeling her arms with nothing to grab onto. Three times she stabilizes herself, as if there was a hand pressed to her back.

Finally, the crest of the island is before her.

Her exhaustion is a thick layer over her skin, her muscles screaming and shaking. There is blood on Rey's cheek where a Nightshrike had cut deep. Her calves are indented with punctures from several Xandu teeth. Their venom runs in her bloodstream.

She wants to stop. Oh, how she wants to rest.

She scans the landscape, targets the cave, and pushes forward.

The grappling hook she had found in the cargo bay is not long enough. Rey swings her body and drops into the water close to the mirror.

The Darkness croons at her in sonorant voices that make her skin crawl.

_I can do this._

She holds the box above her head, guarding it from the surface of the churning water. It gets heavier with every kick, threatening to pull her under. She tilts her chin, gulps air until her elbow cracks against the black rock.

She hauls herself up, dragging her depleted body over shards of broken rock, pushing the case ahead of her toward the dark glass.

And now, when the end is in sight, Rey is afraid.

The box is throbbing, pulsing with power in the sway of the Dark Mirror. Something within her responds to its call. All her fear, all her rage, all her longing meets the surge of Dark Side power with a reverberation that feels like an echo.

She pulls herself to her knees.

Reaches out her fingertips.

She remembers.

Rey is not surprised that it's Exegol that comes to her now. The one time she had called for help.

And he had answered.

_Ben? Are you here for me?_

_I think I have always been. Don't be afraid... I'm coming..._

She had turned her face from him, to look at the very core of her fear _._

_Rey... I'm unarmed..._

The tips of her fingers touch the cold glass.

“Let me see him.”

The sound echoes.

“Let me see Ben Solo.”

There is something inside her. An ancient pull that has always been there. It swells and her body twists with it. She grits her teeth, presses the mirror harder.

It does not want to give him back without something in return, something it is pulling from her.

She tries. She tries to veer away from it, to cling to the Light, but her reflection in the mirror is changing shape and there is only need now, only yearning.

The dark bulk of him is before her, looming over her. She would know that helm anywhere. Her palm presses flat.

_Bring him back to me._

The box opens.

“No.”

This can't be right.

Inside, is a glowing yellow orb. It is the same colour as her lightsabre and it beats with power. Snaking tendrils reach out toward her.

Rey has seen this before, a crude sketch in the margins of the Dark Magic text. The Talisman of Ressurection. Darkside Witches used it to animate their dead, commanding them to fight, a particularly ingenious offensive maneuver. It was lost eons ago.

But it's worse than that, worse than she had imagined.

The effect of the orb only lasts for a few hours hours and their dead emerge from the ground as they lay, stretched and wasted skin, lifeless eye sockets and tattered clothing.

The Talisman is so powerful that Rey's body tenses against it, her back arching to keep contact with the mirror as she recoils from the box.

On the other side of the glass, his fingers curl against hers, scratching with a tremor that she can feel in her teeth.

She calls out to the Force. The Light, the Dark. She doesn't care what facet responds.

_This is not what you promised...bring him back, whole._

Nothing happens.

He remains on the other side of the impenetrable wall.

The shift is so sudden, so easy.

It's an instinct she has always had. It's survival. Because if she fails now, if she comes this far only to have that shimmer of hope ripped away again, she will not recover. And Rey has always survived.

Her eyes hurt with longing. He is so _close_.

_Give him back to me or I will raze this Galaxy to the ground._

_Dzwol shâsotkun._

The dark figure in the mirror bends at the waist, holding the other side of the glass as if it is the only thing keeping him for buckling. He sinks to his knees, hands in the universal sign for surrender. Rey sees the strain in his shoulders, the tension in his bowed head.

She mirrors him. It feels so familiar, this impulse to replicate the movement of his body. It feels like battle.

Then, the Force is roaring around her, lifting her wet hair from her neck, pulling at her damp clothing.

She pushes at the glass, feels it give beneath her fingertips. It softens, bends, thaws, until there is something warm beneath her skin. She is touching his hands. He is solid and real.

She could push through into the Darkness. She could shove herself against that broad, black chest.

But he is pushing back, forcing her from the whorl of energy that is pulling her toward the mirror, like the wrench of the Maw.

_Rey_...

Everything stops.

Strands of her lifted hair are held in place, the pump of her heart slows until she can trace the line of her blood through her body. There is no sound, no vibration. Dust motes hover in frigid air.

The universe has frozen in place to give them this one moment.

Her fingers tighten around his.

He squeezes back.

She hears him as if he had spoken it into her ear.

It is a whisper. It is an ancient prayer.

_There is no death. There is the Force._

His hands leave hers and dart out beyond the line of the mirror. His fingers wrap around the orb and pull it through, into the Dark. 

There is a flare so bright Rey has to close her eyes.

When she opens them, the mirror is solid again. Her palm rasps flat against it but it shows her nothing.

He is gone.

She takes a deep breath, feels the swell of pain in her eyes dim to a low simmer.

“Ben, where are you?”

Her hoarse whisper echoes in the cavern. She hears it, over and over again. But there is no response.

There is nothing left inside her. No power. No strength. She has given everything she has.

This is failure.

She is numb with it.

Rey had felt shock before, on Jakku when the bones of her fingers had been crushed in a sliding panel that her childish fingers could not hold. She had felt it after Starkiller when it had driven her into the call to arms of the Resistance. But she had never felt the beating weight of defeat.

“Ah, Skywalkers, looking to the horizon, they always are.”

She knows that voice, she has heard it before. When she lifts her forehead from the floor, the force-ghost of a small, ancient-looking green alien is watching her. Her response is a hissing rasp, it slithers from her curled lips.

“He burned himself into the Light, for me.”

“Death feeds life. Burned something too, did I. Find it, you must.”

He fades in a peal of manic laughter.

Moving is an impossibility. She will die here, in this wretched hole in the ground on an empty island. She simply can't lift herself from this rock floor.

Light, Dark, all of it has left her and Rey has nothing but memory.

_ I will find a way back to you. _

She shoves her hands into the sharp-edged ground and rises, one last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, so this was a really hard chapter to write because I was trying to show Rey's switch to the Dark Side in a way that felt completely hopeless and inevitable. It might not work all that well, but if I edit it any more, my computer will pack it's bags and tell me to get a life.
> 
> Thank you for reading it and I so, so, so appreciate the encouraging comments I've gotten so far.
> 
> Below are some notes on some of the EU references, in case they're not familiar to you. 
> 
> The Talisman of Resurrection is canon... a fact I am actually quite pleased about. :-)
> 
> Me juuz ku, wermo is Huttese for “See ya, suckers”
> 
> Dzwol shâsotkun is a line form the Sith Code that means 'There is only Passion'
> 
> The Maw is a planet-sized gravity well located in the Akkadese Maelstrom along the Kessel Run
> 
> There is no death. There is the Force is the last line of the Jedi Code


	4. Ben

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, I didn't mean this to come out quite so monster-kinky but there seems to be some dark sh*t in my subconscious that I was not at all aware of...

He has caused so much pain.

He will fix what he can. He will let go of the rest.

He will be worthy of the Light she has stripped herself of, for him.

Ben waits for her beneath the tree of ashes. He can't see her or feel her. He can't leave here now.

There was a point where he had to let her go and he almost hadn't. The mound of her thumb had pressed against his palm, slick with blood and burning with fever.

But she had already slipped to the Dark.

After months of curling himself around her, she uttered the words that pushed him from her, that had torn the Light from her body.

He thinks he is underground now, buried alive, perhaps. It's no less than he deserves but it is not what she wants.

_Take it_ , he says, holding out arms he can no longer see or feel, _Force, take everything that I have left. Let her have this one thing she asks and I swear, I swear it by all who have come before me, I will earn it._

And suddenly, without warning, she is there.

It should have taken her longer, to pull herself from the depths, to traverse the harsh rocky inclines, to find this tomb.

But she has always been stronger than him.

She is on her knees, she is sopping wet, she is dirty and bleeding, she is breathing harsh breaths into the piles of wet, burned wood that carpets the floor.

This hollowed out place stinks of failure, of irony, of the very last of all hope.

_Please_.

He begs. He is not above it. He would do anything to make her hurt just one tiny fraction less.

_Give her everything_.

He calls out, and it is the same plea he had made of himself on a burning starship a thousand light-years from here. The exact same words and yet, a galaxy-wide gulf of difference in their sentiment.

_Just let me take her hand._

There is the sound of glass splintering and the Light surges, bursts around him like a long inhale after drowning.

And it _hurts_.

It burns him with its intensity. It sears the meat from his bones. It turns him to dust and ashes. It builds him back together again as if he's made of flame.

He will take all of it. Any amount of pain. He is glad of it, his training, his torture, all the agony it has taken to bring him to her.

His hand bursts from the blackened roots, grasping at her damp wrist bindings.

She screams, struggles, pulls away from him but he holds fast. She drags him from the burnt earth.

Her skin is fever hot and sweat-slicked, it slips through his fingers. He digs his free hand into the soot and wrenches his upper body free from the charred floor of the Temple of the Jedi.

“Rey.”

His mouth is filled with black soil. She could not have heard anything but a grotesque gurgle.

He tries to reach her through their firing bond. He can feel her, her wheeling thoughts, her exhausted subconscious, her beautiful core.

Her utter terror.

She speaks, but it is not to him. Its a plea to the universe, to anything that can hear her.

_Not this, Not this, I can't. Please don't make me kill this demon that feels like him._

He is covered in darkness, filth and sludge from the black pit she has pulled him from. It drips from his jaw, from his arms as he rips himself from the loam.

She has fallen against the dirt floor. She is calling to the Light and the Dark still. She is blaming her pain on all fronts of the Force.

She's not wrong.

He hacks the filth from inside him, spits a flood of it over his chin and onto the floor. Jagged shards of yellowed glass come with it.

The orb, broken.

His blood mixes with the dirt.

Dark Magic in a Tree of Light scorched fertile again.

She pushes away from him, scrambling over the ground until her back hits the smoked trunk. He watches her slump in defeat. Her lightsaber is hooked to her belt but she makes no move to reach for it.

He crawls toward her, monstrous and trembling.

She is staring at him in horror, tears rolling over her cheeks. She is breathing hard, keening. Her fingers finally grasp at her lightsaber when he reaches her legs.

He stops moving entirely.

She stares, unfocused, until he moves again. The foulness on his fingers leaves black marks on her ankle and Rey's body goes slack. Her fingers slide off the lightsabre and she turns her face away, exposing her neck to his hellish form with a defeated sob that is nothing but darkness.

He crawls up her body, dips his head and leaves a trail of ash on the quivering skin of her throat.

When his mouth is next to her ear, he tries to speak again.

“Rey. I love you.”

She focuses on him, her eyes clearing of that awful, conquered shade. Her hands come to his face, scraping at the dirt until her nails scratch bare skin.

“Ben.”

Her eyes roll back.

He jams his shoulder to the bark to keep her from falling, shifts until his back is to the tree and she is cradled in his earth-covered arms.

He doesn't know how long he stares at her sleeping face, watches the shadowy swirl of her unconscious thoughts. The healing bond grows stronger with every breath he takes.

“Ben.”

For a moment, he can't lift his eyes, doesn't want to. But he's never been a coward.

“Mom.”

Shit. He's already crying and she's only said his name. He's almost glad Rey's unconscious for this.

“Welcome back.”

He can't speak. He orders himself to look up.

Her Force-ghost is younger than she was when he had last seen her. She is standing over him. As he watches, she reaches down and cups his jaw, a gesture she had last used when he was fifteen years old. He can't feel it, not really. But he feels it, all the same.

Now that he understands what he took from her, he cannot stand the thought of her being alone.

“Is he with you? Or is he really gone? Did I imagine him on Kef Bir?”

“No-one's ever really gone. Look at you.”

He laughs. It hurts his torn throat, throws a dribble of blood over his lip.

Leia tilts her chin, indicating Rey's sleeping form.

“There's no Light left in her, Ben.”

He jerks his face away from the outline of her hand.

“I know.”

“What are you going to do about that?”

She should have sounded angrier. Instead, she sounds soft and when he looks up at her again, that same softness is reflected in her eyes.

“I'm going to fix it,” he answers, jaw tight.

She smiles before she fades and she's gone by the time he hears her response.

“ _There's_ my boy.”

The side of Rey's face that is pressed to his chest is now completely covered in dirt. A drop falls from his cheek onto her, a tiny clean streak over her eyebrow.

He watches the trail it makes on her skin and then shuffles to his feet, holding her steady against him.

Considering he's just come back from the dead, Ben is surprised by how easily he carries Rey back to her ship... Poe's stolen shuttle, he thinks with a satisfied grin.

Smug asshole had it coming.

She's lighter than he remembers, from the forest. And she weighed nothing then. When he sets her down in the co-pilot seat, she barely moves.

It's not that he hasn't thought this through. It's all he's thought of for the last five months as he watched her struggle to find a way to bring him back.

It's just that he's completely naked, covered in black detritus, with the unconscious body of the force-drained last Jedi, restrained by a safety harness beside him. He'd imagined an altogether more valiant and noble return to the living. And when he'd thought about carrying Rey off, she wasn't dripping wet and out cold.

He has no credits, no clothes and the ship he'd called home had been blasted out of the sky by the very woman whose head is currently lolling against the seat in the thrum of ignition.

He hasn't a huge amount of choice in where he can take her. One choice really. The only person left in the entire galaxy who knows him. And he will probably kill Ben on sight.

He reaches across to hold Rey's head steady while he gets lines. His fingers leave streaks of dirt on the cleaner side of her face.

She sleeps for the entire six-hour journey.

By the time they arrive, the dirt that covers his body has dried and it flakes from his skin as he reaches for the comm.

“Uncle Chewie, I need your help.”

It's hard to think straight when there is a bowcaster pointed directly at your head.

“No, I didn't do this... I mean, yes, it's my fault-”

Chewie throws his head back and roars, accompanies it with a shake of his weapon that knocks the muzzle against Ben's dirty forehead. _Of course it is_.

“Please, we need your help.”

This is far more humiliating than he'd imagined.

He is wrapped in a tarp he'd found in the shuttle, holding Rey in his arms, surrounded by five Wookie warriors that Chewbacca seems to be in command of. He considers dropping to his knees but before he can do so, Chewie lowers his weapon and walks away with a shake of his head and an aggrieved rumble.

_Come on, your parents would kill me if I didn't help you._

Rey sleeps for another sixteen hours. Chewie sends in a medic from the nearest nursey ring, one used to dealing with smaller bodies. He watches carefully as anti-venom and fluids are pumped into her veins and bacta patches are applied to the worst of her wounds.

He is asked to leave when Rey is to be stripped and bathed.

Ben turns his head but doesn't move from her side.

Eventually, Chewie brings him food, sniffs at him and pokes hard at his chest until he agrees to let him sit with her so Ben can take a much-needed shower.

He has only just emerged from the water, fixing a towel around his hips, when he hears a voice that he could go a lifetime without hearing again.

“When I told you I'd see you around, kid, I was thinking 'in the Netherworld'.”

Ben fights the urge to roll his eyes.

“Luke.”

“You can leave, but I'll just follow you.”

Ben straightens his shoulders and walks back to Rey.

The clothes Chewie gives him are too large. He has to roll the sleeves up, like a child.

Rey makes a noise in her sleep, discomfort. He leans over her to push her hair back from her face. Her skin is still hot but not as feverish as it was before. Her eyelids flutter but they don't open.

“You know, passion was the one part of the Sith code I agreed with.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Ben is not looking at the Force-ghost in the corner, his eyes are glued to Rey's face.

“It's what made me leave Master Yoda to go save the galaxy.”

“Good for you.”

Luke sighs and Ben sits back heavily in his chair.

There is silence for a long time. Enough time to make Ben slump in defeat.

“I want to build a school,” he tells his uncle, the man whose academy he had destroyed. Ben's fingers trace the tendon between Rey's thumb and her wrist. “No-one should awaken alone... the way she did.”

“Well, there _are_ others. Perhaps you two will do a better job of it than I did.”

It's a long time before Ben can speak. When he does, his voice is choked, brittle.

“Luke, it wasn't your f-”

He raises his eyes to find the corner empty. Luke has already left.

“Ben?”

Her voice is like cracked glass. He swings toward her, instantly, his palm against her cheek. Her Light is already returning. He gives her the smile she has been waiting for.

She had never needed his help with anything but he will make her recovery easier, if she will let him. He'll smile at her for the rest of his life if she wants him to.

“Rey.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just want to thank everyone who's read this and commented and left kudos on it.   
> It was actually quite tough to write so I really appreciate people taking the time. 
> 
> One super-dirty epilogue to go and I gotta warn you now, that dark streak that I didn't even know I had continues to astound me in that chapter too. Planned for Friday night or Saturday morning, depending on when I can work up the nerve to actually hit post!


	5. Super Smutty Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OoooooKkkkkk.... so before I go any further, I know I said that this would be a happy ending, and it is, sort of, but these little seeds of menace kept creeping in there so now it kinda reads like it's the start of a new story. Sorry!
> 
> Also, I've been reading a whole bunch of Adam Sackler one shots lately, hence the... detailed description in this chapter. Once again, my apologies.
> 
> And finally, there are three lines of dialogue and one narrative line that I have typed in, taken out, typed in again on an endless loop for the last three days. Yes, they are corny. No, I can't help it. You'll know them when you see them and I am so not sorry. 
> 
> *runs away and hides*

Ben raises his foot and shoves hard against Finn's open side, pushing him to the mat.

“You're thinking too much. Just let it flow.”

Finn's nostrils flare and Rey seems to appear from nowhere, stepping between them, one hand pressed to Ben's chest.

“What?” Ben grumbles as she raises an eyebrow at him.

“Ululha needs some help,” she directs him to the tiny Twi'lek girl trying to levitate three stones simultaneously on the other side of the room, the furthest student from the advanced section where they are training.

Finn reaches for her outstretched hand and hauls himself up as Ben wanders off, looking much less abashed than she would like.

“You look darker today,” Finn tells her, peering at her face.

“I'm aware.”

“What have you been doing?”

“Force-Stun. Want to see?”

He slips a hand over her shoulder, squeezes.

“Nah, I believe you.”

She watches Ben sit before the girl, mirroring her meditation pose, wrapping his energy around hers to help her focus it. He is so soft with the little ones, far gentler than he is with the older students.

“Poe wants to send another delegation,” Finn tells her with a cautious look.

Rey shrugs, her eyes still on Ben.

“We'll see,” she tells him and calls a halt to today's session, directing all students to the mess hall for lunch.

“Rey, the Jedi have always been the galaxy's peace-keepers-”

She turns to look at him, sharp. There is a glint of something in her eyes that he flinches from.

“This is not a Jedi school, Finn. It's a Force-training academy. We're not producing warriors here. If that is what Poe is looking for, he can take his delegation and shove it up his -”

“Sweetheart.” Ben's voice is low and soft.

Finn moves away from Rey as he approaches.

Ben's hands are raised to hip height.

He has that look in his eye, the one that can clear a room in moments. By the time he reaches for her, wrapping one arm around her waist to lift her from the mats, they are alone.

“You look Dark,” he tells her and she rolls her eyes at him.

“I just need to move. Want to spar?”

He gives her a heated stare, lets it linger until she can feel it tingle in all the parts of her that are touching him.

“Nope,” he says, with a slow grin.

She laughs and lifts her legs higher to wrap around his trim waist.

“Is there another way you know of to let go of the Dark? To heighten the Light?” Her voice is breathy. He is kissing her neck as he carries her back to their rooms.

“I have several theories.” His words are muffled into her skin.

She reaches out with the Force to slam their door closed behind them, to pull the sheets from the bed and to unhook both their saber belts, all simultaneously.

"Gross misuse of the Force," he mumbles, admonishing, as he squeezes her ass.

His shins hit the bed frame hard and he grunts into her mouth.

“Ow.”

“My poor _pateesa_.”

She is laughing at him, running her hands through his hair, pulling at the dark grey shirt he wears, that matches her own. She always reverts to Huttese or Teedospeak when she gets too close to the Dark.

When he kneels to lower her onto the bed, Rey tightens her arms around his neck, clinging to him for a second longer than she needs to, before she lets go. Light or Dark, it is always hard for her to let go of him.

Ben crowds over her, nuzzles his nose against her cheek.

“Open the bond,” he urges her, “Let me take it.”

There is silence beneath him, a tremor of unwillingness.

He kisses her, soft and slow.

“Rey, open for me, sweetheart.”

“I can handle it.”

He leans back, watching the fleck of yellow in her pupil.

“I love you,” he tells her, eyes soft, voice just short of a whisper “Let me show you.”

It's his 'in'. It's the method that gets through to her every time the Dark Side pulls at her.

He can always reach her this way.

With a blast like lightening, Rey is in his mind, fiery hot and swimming with violent, carnal impulses she is only barely controlling. Far more darkness than last time, so much it makes his heart stutter.

There's an image clawing at her so forcefully it's all he can see: Sharp teeth and her plump lips, glistening with his spend as he pumps himself with a gloved hand into her open mouth.

Ben's not prepared enough, doesn't see how he could be. His hips jerk forward against the apex of her spread thighs.

“Oh, Rey,” he says out loud, wincing.

She responds with a short, helpless whine and another image, a recent memory: Her hands fisting in his hair as his tongue moves between her legs, his fingers curling inside her, her tight stomach pulsing against the soft underside of his forearm. There is the feral sound she makes when she comes hard.

_That one's real_ , _my love,_ he tells her, _the other's a Dark Side trick._

_I know._

He breathes through it, waits for the wave to wash over him and draw back.

Her breath is heavy in his ear. She is watching the effect her thoughts have on him, she is squirming beneath him, lifting her pelvis to meet his and dropping away. Fighting a war in her head.

He stills completely, searching.

There it is.

His face at an angle, smiling down at something she has said, his arm pulling her close against him and his eyes filled with love and laughter.

He rests his forehead in the crook between her neck and shoulder.

_OK. I have you, Rey. Let go._

She is shaking her head, even while passing him most of the Darkness through the bond.

It slides into him like oil. Ben lets it settle. Later, he'll use it to prop up the northern flank of the defence grid that surrounds the compound. It's always come easily to him but there's so much of it this time, something must have angered her.

Her fingers unclench from his shoulders and he pulls back to look at her. She is frowning, her eyes still holding on to some annoyance.

“You wanna tell me what happened?”

_I do not._

_Dameron, then_.

He runs his hand down her side in a gesture that is meant to be soothing but instead, makes her tense and squeeze her thighs around his hips. He looks down between their bodies and smiles before turning serious again.

_You know, he does have a point. The First Order, or Red Dawn, or whatever they're calling themselves now, is looking to amass allies in the Outer Rim and I feel_ _**somewhat** _ _obligated-_

“No,” she tells him, her voice about two octaves lower than normal, “You don't owe them anything. You already gave your life,” she pulls his face closer, lifting her own so their noses are nearly touching, “and this one's mine.”

He kisses the tip of her nose and she falls back on the pillow with a huff, looking toward the open windows. There is sunlight streaming in, the heady scent of salt-spray and grass after rain.

_There's less than two hundred of them, Ben. They're no threat._

He almost laughs, but reigns himself in and manages to keep it to a small smirk as he responds.

_I distinctly remember thinking that exact same thing about the Resistance and this untrained little scavenger girl they'd found..._

She whips back him, with a strangled laugh and eyes full of mischief.

_Alright, Ben! I'll think about it... if you take your shirt off._

Ben rears back on his knees and pulls the material over his head. He doesn't give her time to inspect him. The welt of a training saber is blooming along his ribs. He feels a spike of her displeasure but he can't tell if it's because she has noticed the mark or she just wanted to look at him for longer.

He hunches over her to help her shift out of her training top and runs his fingers beneath the flexible material of her breastband. Rey arches her back so he can slip the band away and dip his head to run the tip of his tongue over her skin.

Her breath catches.

“Ben.”

He could listen to her say his name until the day he dies.

“Mmm?” his mouth trails to her breast, rolling the point between his lips, swirling his tongue.

_Ahh..._ _too slow... need to move._

She'd kept more than usual.

He skates an arm beneath her and flips them over in one fluid motion. His hands span her waist, helping her to settle over him.

“Who landed a touch?” she frowns at him, running her fingertips along the thin weal of burned skin on the ladder of his ribs.

He bites the inside of his lip, shrugs noncommittal until she raises her eyebrows at him.

“Finn's a quick learner,” he says, grudgingly, “and he's sneaky.”

There is a peal of her laughter as she heals the burn. It turns to a moan when he squeezes her hips and pulls her along the length of him in a lazy, soporific rhythm.

Rey lets him move her and Ben sends her image after image of all the things he likes the most: the line of her body when she's sparring, her freckles, the scrunch of her nose when she thinks something is funny or strange. His favourite one makes him grin: her shocked face that first time he'd stood naked before her.

Rey laughs and swats his chest, grinding down on him for good measure.

She hauls herself up to yank away the rest of his clothes and her own before scrambling back over him. She's all short, sharp movements, impatient and flushed.

_You weren't kidding around when you said you needed to move,_ he's already laughing out loud, that deep rumble she loves _, You're like a Loth-cat on Spice._

Ben's head, shoulders and upper back lift off the bed when she settles herself onto him, easing him into her with a quick slip of her hand. She presses down a little, already wet, and so tight that his breath leaves him in one sharp, short exhale.

Rey wraps her fingers around the back of his neck, pulling him upright so their faces are level.

_Don't get cocky, Solo._

She is smiling in triumph. They've only been doing this for two months and already she is turning it into a battle, although this kind of conflict, he does not mind so much.

His hand dips between their bodies and she sinks a little deeper when he finds her, running small, tight circles over her, waiting until she can take more before he moves.

Her head drops back so he can kiss her neck.

“Gods, you feel so good,” he mumbles the words into her clavicle, ending with a choked huff when she pushes down further.

His thumb draws out the sounds he wants to hear from her until her legs start to quiver and she is bouncing so fast that the bed is creaking with worrying urgency. The objects on their dresser start to rattle with the roll of her energy. Then she's pressing her forehead to his and breathing high, gasping breaths into his mouth.

_Say it_ , he orders as she writhes in his lap.

_Ben,_ she tells him _._

_More, let me hear it._

_Ben, I love you._

She says it over and over, like a mantra. It echoes in his head and hers and the Light flares inside her, warm and bright. Her body tightens around him and he fights hard to hold steady under her. 

She gives him that wild yell, all he needs, all he wants, wrapped up in the hot, insistent press of her tongue and her body thrumming, sheathed around him.

As she comes down, resting her head on his shoulder, he takes hold of her pliant, boneless form and twists until she is beneath him. He angles her hips where he wants them and raises one of her knees to his shoulder. There is a spot she likes and he's aiming for it with the same focused determination he uses in combat.

Rey holds his face in her hands, runs the pad of her thumb over the dimple in his cheek, watching him through half-lidded eyes.

He grins when those eyes widen again, her mouth twisting and her mind sparking with white-hot pleasure.

She is saying his name out loud, she is arching from the bed, her fingers are pressing around his biceps as they strain to keep his weight from her. She is so beautiful, so fierce, with a flushed sheen to her skin that makes her glow as the sunlight hits her.

Her body rocks with every thrust. She echoes the sounds he can no longer contain, the grunts and moans that are pulled from deep in his chest. He hauls her away from the bed frame when he is close, afraid he might slam her against it. He thinks he might break this bed in half with the force he is using to fuck her.

_Beautiful... strong... love..._ _ fucking _ _tight... close..._

Even talking this way, Ben can no longer form a coherent sentence and he feels her smile when he ducks to smash his lips against hers. And then she is flying, holding onto his shoulders and tipping him over the edge.

He comes when she does, with her. With her name on his lips and his mind ringing with her.

After, Ben doesn't feel himself move, thinks maybe she lifted them and arranged them the way she wanted, tangled together, her head resting against his chest, ear pressed to his heartbeat and his arms curled around her. Her fingers trace small circles on his side. His run lines over her back.

He kisses the top of her head, rubs his nose against her forehead when she looks up.

Light and Dark, sweet and sinister, comfort and desire in the beacon of her force signature.

Through the bond, the connection that makes him whole, she feels it too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So thanks a million to everyone who reads this and those who leave comments and kudos. It's so, so appreciated. 
> 
> Also, this fic has inspired the most gorgeous poem by the wonderful WhiteRoseRed - it's called Salvage and I am completely buzzed over it. You should definitely read it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23689489)
> 
> *goes back into hiding because everyone knows about the Sackler thing now*


End file.
